German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took a thinly veiled swipe at Elon Musk on Tuesday, using his New Year’s address to criticize the tech billionaire’s involvement in the European country’s upcoming parliamentary elections.
In prerecorded remarks from Berlin, Scholz took aim at Musk’s attempts to influence the outcome of the election without mentioning the X (formerly Twitter) owner by name.
“Where Germany goes from here will be decided by you — the citizens,” Scholz said of the Feb. 23 elections, which were called after the chancellor lost a confidence vote earlier this month, collapsing his governing coalition. “It will not be decided by the owners of social media channels.”
“In our debates, one can be forgiven for sometimes thinking the more extreme an opinion is, the more attention it will garner,” Scholz continued. “But it won’t be the person who yells loudest who will decide where Germany goes from here. Rather, that will be up to the vast majority of reasonable and decent people.”
Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO and a close adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, endorsed the far-right Alternative for Germany party in an opinion piece published in Welt am Sonntag, a major German newspaper, over the weekend.
“The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country,” Musk wrote in his column, which was published in German. “[AfD] can lead the country into a future where economic prosperity, cultural integrity and technological innovation are not just wishes, but reality.”
Musk, who claims he has an interest in German politics because of his “significant investments” in the country, drew widespread condemnation for wading into the election and even prompted Welt am Sonntag’s opinion editor, Eva Marie Kogel, to resign.
On Monday, the German government explicitly accused Musk of trying to sway the election.
“It is indeed the case that Elon Musk is trying to influence the federal election,” spokeswoman Christiane Hoffmann told reporters during a briefing.
She added that Musk is free to speak his mind.
“After all, freedom of opinion also covers the greatest nonsense,” she said.
